Quotes about anything (6858 quotes, page 34)

“I wanted just a song to sing, and there came a certain point where I couldn't sing anything. So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/84-jul30.htm with Bert Kleinman (30 July 1984). Cf. C. S. Lewis: "People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself."

Singing

“[In America] people are a little bit more scared to show their bodies. I grew up different. Nudity was a common thing. We went camping on nude beaches in Italy. When my parents were still sleeping, I'd just go outside and run to the beach without anything on.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by Eric Thurnauer for Stuff Magazine (November/December 1998)

People , Parent , Sleep

“…Stevens himself hating horses even more than dogs, rating the horse an unassailable first in loathing since though both were parasites, the dog at least had the grace to be a sycophant too; it at least fawned on you and so kept you healthily ashamed of the human race. But the real reason was, though neither the horse nor the dog ever forgot anything, the dog at least forgave you; and his, Stevens's, thought was that what the world needed was more forgiving.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Source: The Mansion (1959), Ch. 16

Hate , World , Dogs , Forgiveness

“"I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died," Pierce said. His voice echoed in the tomb. The flame went out.”

Michael Crichton book Easy Go

Easy Go (1967)

“Race is said to be non-existent, yet our cultural elites rarely seem to think of anything else.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Identity politics (2018)

Thinking

“Personally, I don’t believe in anything more supernatural than what you read about in the Bible, and I only believe that one day out of seven.”

Robert Charles Wilson book The Chronoliths

Source: The Chronoliths (2001), Chapter 8 (p. 112)

Reading , Personality

“Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Cited in Imogen Holst The Music of Gustav Holst (1951) p. 73 as "His favourite piece of advice".

“My goal was not to raise consciousness, but to raise anger. Ours is a country where anything can be accomplished if enough people get angry… because, in America, we act on our collective anger. If you want proof of how that works, just take a look at how New York State finally closed the hated (and virtually unknown) 'incest exception.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Amazon Q&A about Another Life http://www.amazon.com/Another-Life-Final-Burke-Novel/dp/0307377415/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231948863&sr=8-1

Hate , People , Anger , Country

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy…censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

Robert A. Heinlein book If This Goes On

If This Goes On— (p. 401)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Motivation , Sense , Reading

“Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Paris Review interview (1969)

Love , Children , Game , Time

“It is the safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Catholics", published in The Edinburgh Review (1827)

“We can either passively continue on the road to utter domestication and destruction or turn in the direction of joyful upheaval, passionate and feral embrace of wildness and life that aims at dancing on the ruins of clocks, computers and that failure of imagination and will called work. Can we justify our lives by anything less than such a politics of rage and dreams?”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Life , Dreams , Imagination , Failure

“There's no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

On his points of making Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYL9uuqgwpw

Life , Universe

“I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider. If I was offered anything like the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd find it an extremely difficult conflict because I'd be basically disinclined to accept.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Interview with Paul Newman in Abraxas Unbound #7

Literature

“A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Dissemination (1972)

Secret , Books , Law , Game

“"Come on! You too, Will."
"If you must call me anything, you may address me as Most Excellent Testamentary Clause," said the sun bear.
"Claws?" said Suzy, as she tilted the chair to speed the bear on its way. "Orright, Claws, hop to it."
"No, no, no," protested the sun bear. "Most Excellent-"
"Claws it is," said Suzy loudly. "After you, Claws."
"I said… oh… just don't speak to me," huffed the Will as it waddled after Arthur.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Grim Tuesday (2004), p. 300.

Way , Sun , Speed

“The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Address in Edinburgh, Scotland (8 September 1977)

Thinking

“After dinner my father asks me into his study…. Then he slams the door so hard that I nearly jump out of the chair. He tells me that he's been ashamed to invite anyone over since I "came back" because of my "long" hair and my clothes…. "That's all right," I say after a tense silence. "I'm leaving for New York tomorrow. And I'm leaving for Canada, as soon as I get my immigrant status!" His expression breaks first. He urges me to "reconsider." I am afraid to say anything at all. He says, "Ever since you left home your life has been a series of blunders, and this is your biggest; your most fatal…. You tried to destroy society and you couldn't. Really, you were trying to destroy me. Now you're going to destroy yourself instead."”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 206. Spring of 1967. Satin had flown home to Wichita Falls, Texas, to tell his family he was immigrating to Canada. His father is a college professor.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

Life , Home , Study , Silence

“May I be perfectly candid? I also am still a Unionist in this sense. If I were certified of twenty years of unbroken power in this country, I am still most clearly of opinion that the solution of the Irish question which would be best for England and best for Ireland would be the prosecution during that period of the policy which, in our opinion at least, had attained so large a measure of success in the year 1906. In saying this I make it quite plain that I am conscious that there are many of my colleagues—there must be many of my colleagues—who would not take that view. You must make the reservation that you are given that power and that you are given that power for the requisite period. The late Lord Salisbury spoke of "twenty years of resolute government." The Unionist Party, in the period to the close of which I refer, had been given some ten years, and it was only given those ten years by what many members of this House would describe as the accident of the issue, with its repercussion on the Election, of the war in South Africa. That accident and that Election gave the Unionist Party some ten years of office. Is it not evident, in trying to descry what lies in front of us through the mists of the future, that no man living can claim that twenty years, or anything like twenty years, lie in front of any Party that believes in the maintenance of the relations between Ireland and this country on the lines that have existed since the passing of the Act of Union?”

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1920/nov/23/government-of-ireland-bill on the Government of Ireland Bill (23 November 1920).

War , Lie , Question , Sense

“How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 3

“I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

People , Art , Nature , Drawing

“When I'm shooting, I just try to make sure I wouldn't be embarrassed of it later, because in Watertown, you don't get away with anything.”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Eliza Dushku in Black and White http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/06_improper-bostonian.html

“Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Love , Men , Truth , Law

“We are all quite capable of believing in anything as long as it's improbable.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

“She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

People , Music

“There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Musings of Anita Blake; pp. 383-384
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Incubus Dreams (2004)

Love , Hurt

“We are moving towards a situation in which Statism wants to suppress in one area after another, the freedom of Christians to be charitable. In my lifetime, many, many of the things, institutions and agencies that once marked the Christian scene are now gone. They have been ruled out as unfit. Meanwhile the attitude of the state is an interesting one. It is less and less concerned with morality, with anything that deals directly and without restrictions with problems. I think we can see what is happening in one sphere after another, but perhaps best of all in the courts.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Christian Charity vs Welfarism (September 4, 1996)

Problem , Thinking , Freedom

“A time will come when under changed circumstances she will recover her beauty. I thought of it to-day and at once asked myself what would be our relations towards each other in the future, and whether it would make any change. I am certain it will not. I know already how it feels to live without her, and shall not do anything which might make her cast me off.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

9 November
Without Dogma (1891)

Beauty , Feeling , Change , Time

“Indians tend to be a little insecure and they should stop being insecure — I have visited India many times and I can tell you questions I get after my talks are as perceptive as anywhere else in the world, including places like Harvard or MIT. It’s perfectly fine to take pride that someone from their region has used their background and succeeded. That gives them a positive message that they can do anything that they want.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Venki’ makes light of India link- Winner says not to treat science like cricket; league of misses grows

World , Question , Time

“I don't want to do anything to change my face, I like the fact that I'm 41, that I've been through everything I've been through. And I like my lines, but at the same time you want to look the best version of yourself as you age. You want to age gracefully. And I think it's beautiful to get older, and to embrace the life that you've lived, but I also think part of that is wanting to look after your skin a little bit more, and just be a little more proactive.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

In an interview to the website PopSugar. http://www.popsugar.com/beauty/Gwyneth-Paltrow-Restorsea-Interview-34384830#opening-slide (March 28, 2014)

Life , Age , Beauty , Thinking

“To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it…”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Difference Between Writing and Speaking"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“Through the Spirit's action may the young people gathered here have the courage to become saints! This is what the world needs more than anything else.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Government House Ceremony (16 July 2008)

People , World , Courage

“The following Treatise… has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios… the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit…”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.3
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Science

“Trudeau keeps pushing his “diversity is our strength” slogan. Yes, Canada is a huge and diverse country. This diversity is part of us and should be celebrated. But where do we draw the line?
Ethnic, religious, linguistic, sexual and other minorities were unjustly repressed in the past. We’ve done a lot to redress those injustices and give everyone equal rights. Canada is today one of the countries where people have the most freedom to express their identity.
But why should we promote ever more diversity? If anything and everything is Canadian, does being Canadian mean something? Shouldn’t we emphasize our cultural traditions, what we have built and have in common, what makes us different from other cultures and societies?
Having people live among us who reject basic Western values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and openness doesn’t make us strong. People who refuse to integrate into our society and want to live apart in their ghetto don’t make our society strong.
Trudeau’s extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity will divide us into little tribes that have less and less in common, apart from their dependence on government in Ottawa. These tribes become political clienteles to be bought with taxpayers $ and special privileges.
Cultural balkanisation brings distrust, social conflict, and potentially violence, as we are seeing everywhere. It’s time we reverse this trend before the situation gets worse. More diversity will not be our strength, it will destroy what has made us such a great country.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

12 August 2018 on Twitter https://twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1028800406535716864

People , Freedom , Strong , Time

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage , Children , World , Girl

“I know I’m also the girl who’s Chinese family doesn’t speak Chinese, and I’ve grown up watching Western philosophy movies teaching me that I should follow my heart and that I can do and be anything I desire. It almost feels like sometimes I’m too Asian, and then other times I’m not Asian enough. I don’t know… I’m not typical. I don’t fit the box. I’m just ME… Moments like these push me to grow and become better and all I can do is be the best me I can be and trust that what’s right for me will come along.”

Nikki SooHoo (1988) American actress

My Reflection in Mulan http://nikkisoohoo.com/blog/2016/11/7/my-reflection-in-mulan (November 7, 2016)

Family , Feeling , Girl , Time

“It is not uncommon for intelligent adults to turn into passive observers of their own incompetence in anything but the most elementary mathematics. Individuals may see the direct consequences of this intellectual paralysis in terms of limiting job possibilities. But the indirect, secondary consequences are even more serious. One of the main lessons learned by most people in math class is a sense of having rigid limitations. They learn a balkanized image of human knowledge which they come to see as a patchwork of territories separated by impassable iron curtains.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

People , Intelligence , Mathematics , Knowledge

“You said not to do anything that might accidentally contribute to the apocalypse. I know you were joking. But it's less funny when I can't rid myself of the feeling that the apocalypse is coming, somehow. Valentine Morgenstern nearly wiped out the Shadowhunters, and his son is twice as clever and six times as evil.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Magnus Bane, to Catarina Loss, pg. 136
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Feeling , Evil , Time

“Refusing to forgive never made anyone feel better about anything. All you are doing is holding on to feelings of upset, anger and jealousy and that can never be good. I once read that being angry and unforgiving towards someone else is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Jealousy , Feeling , Forgiveness , Drink

“Not that I have anything much against redundancy. But I said that already.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199702271735.JAA04048@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Spelunking is dangerous enough without adding in anything that could be described with the word "ravening."”

Jim Butcher book Heorot

The Dresden Files short stories, Heorot

“We have been given a gift that is really, really precious. It’s simple. It isn’t going to get us anything. It isn’t there to augment anything. It’s there for us to be able to experience something that is within ourselves. It is not there to change our religions, our practices, our daily lives. But it is only there for one reason, for one reason alone. Simple happiness. Simple joy.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia April 2, 1987
1980s

Religion , Change , Joy , Happiness

“Christian. Faith, Family, then Baseball. If what you did yesterday still seems big today, then you haven't done anything today!”

Aaron Judge (1992) American baseball player

Aaron Judge's Twitter Page https://twitter.com/thejudge44?lang=en

Family , Faith

“If a minority, losing an election, can break up the government rather than accept the results of the election, free government is impossible. If the only alternatives to rule by a Constitutional majority, I say, Constitutional majority, a majority formed under the rules of the Constitution with minority rights secured. There were no examples of the Republicans doing anything to prevent the opposition from having freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association. There was a great deal of interference with those rights in the Southern states. But they lost the election according to their own rights. And Lincoln said that if people can break up the government rather than accept the results of a fairly conducted election, then the only alternatives are anarchy or tyranny. What is to prevent, he said, anyone of the states seceding from any future union?”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

People , Freedom , Future

“The strange thing about the BJP is that its voters consider it a Hindu party, its enemies denounce it as a Hindu party, but the party will call itself anything except a Hindu party.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Also quoted in Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India by Makarand R. Paranjape
1990s, BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997)

“Look under the “Love and Friendship” section and see dozens of cards designed for women to send to women, most bashing men, and virtually none saying anything loving about men.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Love , Women , Men , Friendship

“Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

War , Truth , Science

“The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.

“Sheep were docile, yes, but vigilant. Unlike many people, sheep were always aware that predators existed and were alert for the scent and the schemes of wolves.
Contemporary Americans were so proseperous, so happily distracted by such a richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to have their fun diminished by acknowledging that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves it was a dog.”

Dean Koontz book The Good Guy

Krait's musings
Source: The Good Guy (2007), Chapter 7, pp. 52-53

People , Dogs , Wolf

“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference — asking good questions — made me become a scientist.”

Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988) American physicist

As quoted in "Great Minds Start With Questions" in Parents Magazine (September 1993).

School , Question , Learning

“Interviewer: Are there any groups you won’t go after?
Penn: We haven’t tackled Scientology [in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! ] because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.
Interviewer: Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back …
Penn: Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Interview in Las Vegas Weekly (24 June 2010) https://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/2010/jun/24/celebrity-issue/.
2010s

Family , Thinking

“We have to-day perhaps the most magnificent opportunity of service to our country that has ever been given to any party. You who have just been elected to the House of Commons are, by the testimony of your fellow-countrymen, their natural leaders for the next four or five years. It is your duty, your primary duty, to educate that great democracy of which we are all a part…Can there be anything that stands before us more clearly or poignantly than the groups of our fellow-countrymen who listened in faith to what we had to say, who trusted us and have given us their confidence, and who believe in their hearts that we have come to London to do what we can to right those things that are hard and difficult for them, and to help them in what is always the difficult struggle that they have in life? Don't ever lose touch with your constituency; don't ever mistake the voice of the clubman and the voice of the Pressman in London for the voice of the country. It is the country that has returned you; it is the country which will judge you.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 72-73.
1924

Life , Education , Faith , Democracy

“There's the Mike Wallace approach, or you can call it the Michael Moore approach, which is the adversarial approach. In the end, that is not in the service of finding out anything. It's in service of dramatizing a received view: Namely, "This guy is an asshole, and now I will illustrate how this guy is an asshole by showing his inability to answer the questions I put to him." It's not what I'm about. It's not that one approach is good and the other is bad. They just have different valences. I like confrontation as much as the next guy. I'll give you the best example I can think of for why I like my method. [During] my interview with Emily Miller, one of the wacko eyewitnesses in The Thin Blue Line, she volunteered that she had failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup. It wasn't me saying to her, "Emily Miller, how come you failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup?" Why? Because I didn't know she failed to do it, because part of the trial record said she had successfully picked him out. When I heard this, not in response to some adversarial question, just her telling me her story, I asked her, "How did you know you failed to pick out Randall Adams?"”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

She said, "I know because the policeman sitting next to me told me I had picked out the wrong person and pointed out the right person so I wouldn't make that mistake again."
Source: Pitch Weekly http://www.tipjar.com/dan/errolmorris.html

Guy , Question , Thinking , Parting

“Honesty is negative and sterile; it is ignorant of the correct evaluation of appetite and ambition – the only powers through which you can found anything durable.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

“There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Books

“I am not the official Church Jesus who is accepted by policemen, bankers, judges, executioners, officers, church bosses, politicians and similar representatives of power. I am not your Superstar who keeps playing his part for you on the cross, and whom you hit in the face when he steps out of his role, and who therefore cannot call out to you, "I am fed up with all your pomp and all your rituals! Your incense is disgusting. It stinks of burnt human flesh. I can't bear your holy celebrations and holidays any longer. You can pray as much as you like, I'm not listening. Keep all your idiotic honours and laudations. I won't have anything to do with them. I do not want them. I am no pillar of peace and security. Security that you achieve with tear gas and with billy clubs. I am no guarantee for obedience and order either. Order and obedience at reform schools, prisons, penal institutions, insane asylums. I am the disobedient one, the restless one who does not live in any house. Nor am I a guarantee for success, savings accounts and possessions. I am the homeless one without a permanent home who stirs up trouble wherever he goes. I am the agitator, the invoker, I am the scream. I am the hippie, bum, Black Power, Jesus people. I want to free the prisoners. I want to make the blind see. I want to redeem the tortured. I want to cast love into your hearts, the love that reaches out beyond everything that exists. I want to turn you into living human beings, immortals.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Jesus Christus Erlöser (1971)

Love , People , School , Peace

“Organizational and not financial or ownership embeddedness is likely to be a more important cause of actions of firms than anything else in the case of United States. This means efforts should concentrate on specifying models of relations between firms that focus on intra- and interorganizational processes, such as the construction of strategic action and the cultural frames by which such a construction makes sense.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The architecture of markets, 2001, p. 145

Sense , Effort

“The starting point is that one is interested in the universe, one observes that one is finite and that this is intolerable. One has a limited time and apparently limited capacity with which to find anything out. Therefore it is possible to despair. There are many orders of despair, and none of them are known to normal psychology. This is demonstrated by the fact that it has not become existential. Normal psychology will never devalue anything. Existential psychology, at least to a certain point, consists of exploiting the recoil from the despair of finiteness. The recoil is a drive with at least the instinctive immediacy of the survival instinct. There is no point in saying, 'What is there to do? What could such a drive possibly tend towards?”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The survival instinct tends to prolong life. The fundamental drive tends to inform itself about the universe.
Advice to Clever Children (1981)

Life , Universe , Time , Despair

“Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“A mind cannot possibly consider anything beyond what it can measure or calculate; without a body it can only consider itself. Without the interruptions of hellos from the eye, ear, tongue, nose, and finger, the evolving mind huddles in the corner picking its navel.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

“The pilots I worked with in the aerospace industry were willing to put on almost anything to keep them safe in case of a crash, but regular people in cars don't want to be uncomfortable even for a minute.”

Nils Bohlin (1920–2002) Swedish inventor

Deathwatch mailarchive http://slick.org/deathwatch/mailarchive/msg00869.html

People , Cars

“The more the Jew is a Jew, the more universalist will his views and aspirations be, the less aloof will he be from anything that is noble and good, true and upright, in art or science, in culture or education; the more joyfully will he applaud whenever he sees truth and justice and peace and the ennoblement of man prevail and become dominant in human society.”

Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) Jewish theologian, germany 19th century

Essay "Religion Allied to Progress" http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/363_Transp/Orthodoxy/SRHirsch.html

Truth , Education , Peace , Justice

“I never apologized for anything in my life. The only thing I’m sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert’s colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn’t like my movie, then I’m sorry for him.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

Life

“Fay: I'm innocent till I'm proved guilty. This is a free country. The law is impartial.
Truscott: Who's been filling your head with that rubbish?
Fay: I can't be had for anything. You've no proof.
Truscott: When I make out my report I shall say you've given me a confession. It could prejudice your case if I have to forge one.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act II

Law , Country

“I agree with Rosenberg’s text that says anything is art as soon as it is put in a museum. And that is why artists are such appalling things, since they are responsible for this state of affairs in art.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

Source: Art is no longer justifiable or setting the record straight, 2000, p. 66

Art

“Another window to the outside opened on the first day of school, when an eager young teacher told the class they could find out anything in the world if they paid attention and learned to read. To Jake it came as a revelation, the missing piece of the puzzle of his life! Here was the secret of existence he had known must be somewhere! All the mysteries of his existence would come clear, all the things he wondered about, if he would only learn to read. He did learn, quickly, passionately, with the ardor many boys reserve for sports.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (pp. 44-45)

Life , Secret , World , School

“It was strange going back to Spain again: I had never expected to be allowed to return to the country that I loved more than any other except my own and I would not return so long as any of my friends there were in jail. But in the spring of 1953 in Cuba I talked with good friends who had fought on opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War about stopping in Spain on our way to Africa and they agreed that I might honorably return to Spain if I did not recant anything that I had written and kept my mouth shut on politics. There was no question of applying for a visa. They were no longer required for American tourists.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1 (the opening paragraph of the book)

Love , War , Way , Spring

“I don’t believe we’re in for a crash now. It's much more likely that government will just conceal the continuation of inflation by price controls. But if anything is worse than an open inflation, it’s a repressed inflation. What you’re likely to get is not a violent deflation but increasing stagnation of productivity.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750
Leader of the Opposition

People , Truth , History , Communication

“I was 8 or 9 when I had a sighting of a disk-shaped craft that convinced me that it was certainly not an airplane or anything conventional.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Source: Quoted in: Researcher's Close Encounters Convince Him Of Extraterrestrials The Virginian-Pilot, Roy A. Bahls, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=VP&p_theme=vp&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAFF84CB5EACDC1&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM (22 March 1995)

“I have very strongly of late the wish that others may be as sensitive as myself and the fear that they will not be. Colleague Sir Frank Adcock stumped by the sunset-portent unheeding. And I can't arge that I gain, or that others would gain, anything for humanity by observing and recording what went on for a few moments in the sky on Boar Race evening. I sometimes pretend to myself that I am public-spirited. I am not. I am an hedonist who wants pleasant sensations. On the other hand I am not the usual type of hedonist, for I want sensations to be had”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

if not by myself, then by someone else. The show shouldn't end with my death, which becomes a minor boo-hoo.

p. 211 (1959)
Commonplace Book (1985)

Death , Fear

“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Life , World , Way , Imagination

“People who say this cracker is literally and physically the body of their god and that I'm doing this great act of heresy and sacrilege and horror -- even though I didn't actually do anything to it -- is disturbing. It's like discovering there are witch doctors lurking in your community and they've been doing weird practices.”

PZ Myers (1957) American scientist and associate professor of biology

Commenting on a Eucharist in [Paul Schmelzer, http://minnesotaindependent.com/view/mnindy-interview, Unrepentant science-heathen PZ Myers still intends to prove 'this cracker is nothing', Minnesota Independent, 2008-07-15]

God , People , Communication

“Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that "people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything." Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.”

David Boaz (1953) libertarian, author and editor

"Key Concepts of Libertarianism" (1 January 1999)

People , Law , Way , Freedom

“As an experimental psychologist, I have been trained not to believe anything unless it can be demonstrated in the laboratory on rats or sophomores.”

Steven Pinker book Words and Rules

Source: Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (Basic Books, 1999), p. 84

Training

“To me, anything that is a church is really just far too close minded.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in Ultimate Guitar (2007).
2000s

“Great complaints were made by both sides as to whose fault it was that there was a failure, but I told the navy I didn't want to hear anything about it; they did not get through, and didn't get the fort, and the less said about it the better.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 144

Failure

“i do not question your sincerity—if anything, i object to your questioning the sincerity of other religions.
i am not questioning their sincerity. i am questioning their validity.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 15 (p. 72; Dr. Auberson, then HARLIE)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Religion , Question , Sincerity

“I thought that young people had more problems than old people, and I hoped I could last until I was older so I wouldn't have all those problems. Then I looked around and saw that everybody who looked young had young problems and that everybody who looked old had old problems. The "old" problems to me looked easier to take than the "young" problems. So I decided to go gray so nobody would know now old I was and I would look younger to them than how old they thought I was. I would gain a lot by going gray: (1) I would have old problems, which were easier to take than young problems, (2) everyone would be impressed by how young I looked, and (3) I would be relieved of the responsibility of acting young—I could occasionally lapse into eccentricity or senility and no one would think anything of it because of my gray hair. When you've got gray hair, every move you make seems "young" and "spry," instead of just being normally active. It's like you're getting a new talent. So I dyed my hair gray when I was about twenty-three or twenty-four.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work

People , Hope , Problem , Thinking

“If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 262.

Truth , History , Passion , Science

“Light suddenly caught the steel of his helmet and made it burn like the face of some mighty fallen angel. It could have been the face of Lucifer himself. I felt then that he was perfectly capable of destroying the whole world without a shred of remorse if he believed that he could not, himself, go on living. Such creatures, I remember thinking, have always dwelt among us. They would reduce the multiverse to ash, if they could. Why, I agonized, can we not recognize them and stop them before they achieve so much power? A tiny part of the human race was responsible for the misery of the majority.
I thought again of the injustices which we ourselves casually perpetrated and I wondered how we should ever set anything to rights while we continued to allow such vast discrepancy, so much at odds with the religious and political principles we claim as our daily guides.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 386)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

World , Angels , Thinking , Light

“Even when the Earth phases out, sun the diminishes, and everything goes wherever it goes to, the experience of your Knowledge cannot diminish. It is from where even, you might say, eternity starts. It is the source of all sources. It is. It is the experience which is beyond death, beyond creation, beyond anything in this world.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Denver, Colorado, February 25, 1979
1970s

Death , World , Knowledge , Sun

“Then I started to think in Lipp's about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d'Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assignment to Rhineland and the Ruhr. It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 8

People , Feeling , Spring , Thinking

“We had spoken about death without being morbid about it and I had told Antonio what I thought about it which is worthless since none of us knows anything about it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

Death

“If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

Attributed by Ben Weiximann, "Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes" http://bleacherreport.com/articles/59377-top-15-funniest-lou-holtz-quotes/, TheBleacherReport.com.
Attributed

“There is no need for him to call on me. I am not about to be a party to anything having to do with the law that is going to destroy individual freedom and liberty in this country. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy our free enterprise system. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy neighborhood schools. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy the rights of private property. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys your right --and my right -- to choose my neighbors -- or to sell my house to whomever I choose. I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys the labor seniority system. I am having nothing to do with this so-called civil rights bill. The liberal left-wingers have passed it. Now let them employ some pinknik social engineers in Washington, D. C., to figure out what to do with it.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Speech http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1951-/speech-by-george-c-wallace-the-civil-rights-movement-fraud-sham-and-hoax-1964-.php (4 July 1964)
1960s

School , Law , Freedom , Housing

“Feudalism is but a system of Slaves and Tyrants; my country, desiring to be free, can no longer preserve anything in this system.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

La féodalité n'est qu'un système d'Esclaves et de Tyrans; ma patrie veut-être libre, ne peut plus rien conserver dans ce qui tient à ce système.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 38, 27082 2892-7]
On feudalism

Country

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”

Neil Gaiman book Coraline

Coraline (2002)

“Got my ticket at the airport
Well I guess I've been marking time
I've been living in another country
That operates along entirely different lines
Keep me away from porter or whiskey
Don't play anything sentimental it'll make me cry
I've got to go back my friend
Is there really any need to ask why?”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Got to Go Back
Song lyrics, No Guru (1986)

Time , Cry , Country

“The painted, engraved, and carved images of prehistory are threads from past cultures, and we are foreigners trying to interpret their meaning. Perhaps more than anything else, art can be fully understood only in the context of the culture that produced it.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art , Past , Painting

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

Business , Problem

“[Harry to Janice, about the financial situation] "…You're in real trouble."
"I know… But you have to have faith. You've taught me that."
"I have?" He is pleasantly surprised, to think that in thirty-three years he has taught her anything. "Faith in what?"”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

"In us. In life," she says.
Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Life , Faith , Thinking

“NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.
A decade on and the rest of the page remains blank for we still cannot find a single datum that remains true under all possible circumstances, nor evidence of the impossibility of anything under all possible circumstances.
But by all means have a go….”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: PsyberMagick (1995), p. 83

“They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet… in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the American public, as quoted in "The Awkward Conscience of a Nation" in The Daily Mirror (3 November 2003); also partly quoted in "The company they keep" by Michael Barone, in U.S.News & World Report (12 July 2004) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/040712/12barone.htm
2004

People , Stupidity , Suffering , Country

“The situation now is that the Islamic Caliphate in Turkey is dead and will never rise again, because we have destroyed its moral strength, the Caliphate and Islam. We must put an end to anything which brings about any Islamic unity between the sons of the Muslims. As we have already succeeded in finishing off the Caliphate, so we must ensure that there will never arise again unity for the Muslims, whether it be intellectual or cultural unity.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

There is no record of this alleged statement made by Lord Curzon in the House of Commons. It is a forged quote by radical Islamist extremists like the Islamic Thinkers group, and Hizb ut-Tahrir members such as Khondakar Golam Mowla.
Misattributed

Dead

“Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e. g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Soul , Thinking , Reality , Appearance

“Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus, and it's hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy, and more than anything else in the world, you wanna get off. And the only reason in the world you don't get off is it's still fifty blocks from where you're going. Well, I can get off right now if I want to. Because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it's still the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. Whenever I've had enough, it's my stop. I've had enough.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Jessie
night Mother (1983)

World , Feeling

“It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them. … I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a competitor. That’s what I do. It doesn’t make sense for me to go over and shake somebody’s hand.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

A Handshake Is Not Too Much to Ask, Even From a King, William C. Rhoden, The New York Times, June 1, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/sports/basketball/02rhoden.html,
James answering why he refuses to shake hand with Dwight Howard.

Sense , Sport

“Jabir reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, went through the market with people on both sides of him. He passed the dead body of a deformed sheep, took it by its ear and then said, "Which of you would like to have this for a dirham?" They said, "We would not like to have it for anything. What would we do with it?" He said, "Would you like to have it?" They said, "By Allah, even if it was alive, it would be defective since it is deformed, and now it is dead."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

He said, "By Allah, this world has less value with Allah than this has with you."
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, 464 https://bewley.virtualave.net/riyad3.html
Sunni Hadith

People , World , Peace , Dead

“With the old ideal of liberty there was a great and urgent passion for freedom of opinion and freedom of speech. In the present day we cared very much less for freedom of opinion as an element in our national life than we did in those days. But we ought always to be on our guard against giving the smallest encouragement to any attempt of any kind of any dominant party to put down the free expression of anything which was not criminal.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Economic Students' Union at the School of Economics and Political Science, London (14 December 1900), quoted in The Times (17 December 1900), p. 13.
1900s

Life , Freedom , Passion

Quotes about anything page 34

Quotes about anything
page 34